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During the past week, the United Nations has been holding its annual festival of climate alarmism in Doha, the capital of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The gathering will continue all next week.

Past meetings in places such as Copenhagen and Cancun have received worldwide attention as participants have gathered to hammer out new emissions restrictions in hopes of limiting global warming.

But the Doha gathering has garnered much less notice.

The conventional wisdom is that this is because there is little hope of a deal on a treaty to replace the Kyoto accords that run out at the end of this year. Developing nations such as China and India remain adamant that all of the emissions pain must be borne by Canada, the United States, Europe and other industrialized nations.

Even though China is now the largest carbon emitter in the world and puts out about seven times as much CO2 per dollar of GDP as the United States, it believes it should be exempt from any climate treaty. Because the CO2 accumulation to date has been caused by developed nations, China does not want to be bound by emission limits until its economy has had a chance to grow to industrialized levels.

But the lack of international interest may also be a sign that, at least subconsciously, more scientists are recognizing that the climate isn’t changing as rapidly or dramatically as predicted.

Certainly the alarmists, both within the scientific community and among environmentalists — the Al Gores and David Suzukis — are as vocal as ever in their predictions of imminent doom. They still insist that every study that calls into doubt their “settled science” is a plot by Big Oil and climate “deniers” to ignore reality.

But take, for instance, what is sometimes called the “Arctic refreeze.” It’s true that this summer more northern sea ice melted that at any time since the record low of 2007. But less well-publicized is the fact that since Oct. 1 there has been a record return of ice in polar regions, or that Antarctic sea ice has been growing for 30 years.

The destruction caused by Superstorm Sandy has been used repeatedly in Doha as “proof” extreme weather is intensifying.

Yet as Chris Landsea of the U.S. National Hurricane Center pointed out this week, there has been no increase in the intensity of landfalling hurricanes since 1900. While 2004 and 2005 were the two most intense hurricane years in the last century, 2006 to 2011 were the five least intense.

Britain is this year predicting its coldest, snowiest winter in a century, following 2011-12 which was the coldest, snowiest in 70 or 80 years. Europe and Alaska are in the grips of early cold snaps and Moscow has had one of its snowiest Novembers on record.

Global temperatures have been flat for nearly 15 years and northern Hemisphere winter temperatures have fallen significantly in the past two years, despite predictions that global warming would be most felt in northern climates, in winter.

It’s true that many alarmist scientists objected when the U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper ran stories two months ago claiming global temperatures have flatlined since 1997. But the fact is, the Mail was only using temperature statistics provided by the U.K. Met Office, a very pro-warming government agency.

Even more convincing is a chart compiled by researcher Paul Vaughn for the blog Tallbloke’s Talkshop (tallbloke.wordpress.com) that shows sea level and sea surface temperatures rise and fall with the activity of the sun — not emissions.

This doesn’t prove that man-made climate change isn’t happening, but it does show the scientific consensus is far from universal.

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There are three broad reasons why women in Canada should be banned on specific occasions and in particular places from wearing the Muslim face covering known as the niqab: Security concerns, the possibility of fraud and cultural concerns.